State Legislatures have Failed the Task

January 28, 2003

By Elizabeth McMahon (View author info)
Copyright ahrc.com

In April 2000, Richard Glassel entered a meeting room at the Ventana Lakes development in Arizona where a homeowner association meeting was in progress. Armed with several guns, he immediately began firing. Before he was wrestled to the ground by members, two people lay dead. Last week, a jury in Arizona sentenced him to death.

Questions swirl in the minds of those who were part of the tragedy.

Why did he do it?

Was this just an isolated incident or a harbinger of things to come in homeowner associations?

Did the actions of the homeowner association in some way precipitate this tragedy?

Was he mentally deranged?

Or did he feel that there was no way out of the situation in which he was in - his home had been foreclosed on - and that violence was the only way to gain some measure of retribution?

We may never know the answers to these and a thousand other questions, but many thoughtful people are beginning to ask whether now is the time to have a National Commission on Homeowner Associations. Homeowner associations have sprung up largely unnoticed on the national scene, but they are beginning to penetrate that consciousness. Shows such as 20/20 and the X-Files provide some evidence of that.

The latest statistics show that about 50 million Americans now live in homeowner associations - about 1 in every 6. They are found from coast to coast.

It is tempting to think that what Mr. Glassel did is just an isolated exception, that the developer's picture-perfect image of peaceful, happy people living in ordered, well-tended communities is the norm. Unfortunately, that idyllic dream is not the way things are. All across the country, homeowners have risen up in revolt in one form or another against what they perceive as intolerable practices. As is often the case - that is probably only the tip of the iceberg.

One central theme running through all these protests is the feeling that the individual's home is being threatened by lawyers, managers and other commercial interests. The notion that one's home is one's castle, a sacred space where the outside world should not intervene, seems to many of these homeowners to have been shattered.

The dynamics of the development of homeowner associations would seem to lend credence to this claim. After World War II, developers realized that they could make more profit by mass-producing houses than by simply building one at a time. They also realized that they need to entice people into their new developments, so they created swimming pools, clubhouses and other amenities. They knew that the prospect of rising property values was a significant carrot for potential buyers.

So they put in manicured lawns and palm trees, and created the illusion of an earthly paradise. In many cases, they erected a guard gate at the entrance to further enhance peoples' sense of security. In their view,heaven was just about to begin.

However, as is often the case with the best laid plans of mice and men, things did not quite turn out that way.

For a start, somebody had to manage and maintain the swimming pools, clubhouses and manicured lawns. This required a new level of government and homeowner associations were born. Developers hit on the romantic notion of volunteer homeowners, elected by their fellow homeowners, running what were in effect, large scale business enterprises. It would all be a friendly, happy arrangement.

But, of course, the human condition does not stop at the edge of the guarded gate community. Hunger for power, petty jealousies, corruption - all these and more were not left behind in the old world. They came right through the gate into this brave new world.

And something else came right through the guard gate - lawyers. Sensing a profitable new source of business, they swarmed all over associations both internally and externally. They drafted CCR's that a supreme court justice might have a hard time understanding, let alone the hapless board of directors.

But they went a lot further. They invaded legislatures around the country and persuaded many a politician (often with the help of "campaign contributions") to pass laws that would further enshrine the lawyers' role in homeowner associations. In many states, they were able to secure non-judicial foreclosure for the non-payment of assessments - even for as little as $5. This now became the lawyers' nuclear weapon of choice, and guaranteed instant profitability.

Other commercial interests joined the bandwagon. Some people labelled themselves as management companies, and told homeowner associations that they could not possibly operate without them. Insurance companies lobbied legislatures to require homeowner associations to purchase million dollar policies. Local municipalities worked in cahoots with all the commercial interests because it meant that city taxes would not have to take care of these developments.

In the midst of all this, the individual homeowner felt like a piece of flotsam being swept along on a raging river. Architectural Review Committees - the bane of all homeowner associations - told him what color he had to paint the house, what flowers he could plant, how long he could keep his garage door open. Multitudes of regulations were wrapped around his house like tentacles.

And then, there was always the corruption. Board members somehow always had tbe best trimmed lawns and the fancy plants. Information on the finances of the association were often wrapped in secrecy. Attempts to get on the board to change things were met with recriminations and hassles from the incumbents. All of a sudden, challengers to board authority would find themselves being cited for alleged violations, and then being fined. If they protested, the lawyers moved in. The homeowner often then had to move out. The garden of Eden had in many ways become the garden of evil.

State legislatures have become not only totally inept at rectifying these problems, but part of the problem themselves. From Texas to California to Arizona, state legislatures have been invariably run by the homeowner association commercial interests - the lawyers, managers, insurance companies etc. Genuine homeowner representation has been at an absolute minimum - if even present. In California, for example, it was the homeowner association lobby group (CAI - Community Association Institute) that wrote the basic homeowner association law in that state. The author of the bill, Gray Davis (now governor), even told the lobby group to write the bill "to take care of the special interests".

So unfortunately,the Glassel case may not be the only one. With 200 million guns on the streets of America, violence may be seen by some as a solution to their problems. Homeowner associations, of course, could further increase the image of living in a prison, by installing metal detectors at the entrances to meetings and hiring armed guards.

However, an ounce of prevention is always worth more than truck loads of retaliation. All societies have wrestled with the issue of violence - its causes and how to minimize it. The time has come in homeowner associations for an impartial national commission to investigate them, and recommend ways in which the original spirit of independence that has been the tradition of this country, is not snuffed out under the monolithic and megalithic institution of homeowner associations. Mr. Glassel is alleged to have said that what started everything was his desire to trim his bushes as he wanted, not how some impersonal association wanted. Would two lives have been saved if this wish had been honored?

As the murders took place in Arizona, it might be appropriate that Senator John McCain be the one to initiate this commission. Out of that tragedy may be born the seeds for some future hope. The only way to find out is to do it.